In short
- NewLimit goals to extend wholesome lifespan utilizing AI-driven cell reprogramming.
- The Sequence B spherical brings complete funding to over $170 million, backed by prime tech and VC names.
- The longevity startup is a part of a broader pattern of billionaire-backed longevity ventures.
NewLimit, a biotechnology startup co-founded by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, has raised $130 million in a Sequence B funding spherical to bolster its ambitions to gradual and even reverse elements of human getting older.
The spherical, led by Kleiner Perkins, drew participation from outstanding returning buyers together with Founders Fund, Dimension Capital, angel investor Elad Gil, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan, and Stripe co-founder Patrick Collison, in keeping with a assertion.
New buyers included former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Apple’s former machine studying director Daniel Gross, and Khosla Ventures. The elevate brings the startup’s complete funding to over $170 million following a $40 million Sequence A in 2023.
Flip it and reverse it
Armstrong launched NewLimit greater than 4 years in the past with former GV associate Blake Byers and stem cell researcher Jacob Kimmel.
The corporate is pursuing therapies that enhance “wholesome life expectancy”—how lengthy somebody can dwell a wholesome life, versus simply life expectancy—by reprogramming the human epigenome by altering how cells behave with out altering their underlying DNA.
NewLimit described its mission as treating getting older itself, which it referred to as the “meta driver of practically each main human illness.”
“As soon as regarded as irreversible, the rising science of epigenetic reprogramming has proven that getting older is in actual fact malleable,” it stated.
NewLimit is a part of a rising motion amongst tech billionaires who’re pivoting from software program and fintech to the tantalizing prospect of organic immortality.
Billionaire obsession
The enterprise matches squarely in a wave of Silicon Valley-backed longevity startups hoping to unravel the age-old drawback of getting older itself with cutting-edge tech and some huge cash.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is among the greatest funders of Retro Biosciences, which is pursuing age-reversal medicine. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has thrown his weight behind one other enterprise, Altos Labs, aiming to “reverse illness, damage, and the disabilities that happen all through life by restoring cell well being and resilience by cell rejuvenation.”
In the meantime, Methuselah Basis, a nonprofit named after the Bible’s longest-living determine (he supposedly died on the age of 969), has the bold objective of constructing “90 the brand new 50 by 2030.” It counts PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Ethereum’s Vitalik Buterin amongst its donors.
NewLimit’s technique pairs large-scale genomics with AI-driven evaluation.
Its “Discovery Engine” assessments 1000’s of reprogramming mixtures on human cells and research the results.
The corporate’s machine studying fashions assist select which mobile tweaks to pursue within the subsequent cycle, avoiding random trial-and-error in favor of focused experimentation. It has but to conduct any human trials.
“We’ve constructed expertise to run the most important experiments within the area,” the corporate stated within the assertion. “Our wager is that this mix of AI and scaled genomics can unlock medicines that give every of us extra wholesome years.”
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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